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ARCHIVE 1999 |
South London and Maudsley NHS Trust
Temporary Homes UK
24 November to 30 November 1999
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Maria Amidu and Rea (3rd International Artist in Residence)
exCHANGES
in collaboration with Goldsmiths College, University of London
2 November to 15 November 1999
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An indigneous Australian digital artist, Rea was artist-in-residence at the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmith College. She collaborated with a London-based artist, Maria Amidu, who works in glass. The two aritsts came together to share skills and work collaboratively across their specialist media.
The exhibition of work at 198 Gallery showcased this new work in glass and digital media. This was the first part of a two-part project and continued in Sydney, Australia in 2001, when Rea became the host artist and Maria Amidu the visiting artist from London.
In dealing with diverse issues such as identity, politics, processes, permanence and ephemerality, the artists created work that included purses, bags, small-scale objects and text. The pieces on exhibition featured digital images on architectural blueprint, transparency and canvas, with some inlaid into glass objects.
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Haitian Artists
Drapo Visions
22 September to 22 October 1999
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80-90% of the Haitian population practice Vodou, a religion influenced by Western and Central African religious beliefs, and Roman Catholicism.
The sequinned 'drapo' (flags) depict the worshipped 'Iwa' (spirits) who are consulted during divinational rites. Reflecting society, the Iwa's iconic significance adapts itself to the contemporary social, political and spiritual needs of its practitioners, regenerating its power irrespective of economic and geographical constraints.
This exhibition of contemporary ‘drapo’ and metal sculpture was organised in collaboration with Leah Gordon and Charles Arthur of the Haitian Support Group.
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Family Friends
Summer Scheme Exhibition
31 August to 11 September 1999
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Kamala
Materialistic Gal
21 July to 14 August 1999
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Resistance, a factor of power-play, articulates itself in various guises that can empower the individual or community to create an alternative mode of existence that runs concurrent with mainstream/authoritative systems, and on occasions its rebellious nature often manifests itself in the extreme.
Materialistic Gal focused on individual power and how the contemporary urban women that Kamala portrays, seek to define themselves. The desire to revel in material excess and allude to the glamorous lifestyles real or imagined is at their disposal through the cosmetic: fashion, body sculpture, hairstyling and personal possessions. Call Me depicts a close-up shot of a taloned hand with a fingernail monographed SEXY in gold, clutching a leopard skin-covered mobile phone; Getting Freaky With It features the lower body of a fit female with red and gold 'batty riders' in a provocative pose. It is an outward expression of the ego and in some cases clears the path for the alter-ego to breathe and be noticed.
This series of mixed-media works by Kamala explored through her chosen models how self-definition can be attained. Sexual prowess, humour, confidence and vanity are some of the elements explored in her inquiry about the modern heroine.
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Michael Forbes
Photographic Work
1 June to 10 July 1999
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Michael Forbes's powerful photo-montages confront forms of racism, masculinity and (mis)information and draw visual analogies betwen art, politics, the media and domesticity.
Some are desert(ed) landscapes in which diverse historical events come together; some are stunning matrices, like masks that conceal and reveal a real threat of violence and repression. These works inhabit a space where every event has been multi-mediated until they become hyper-real.
The themes in Forbes's work often involve observations on the society we live in; they are mediated by a variety of approaches.
Portraiture, a genre with a long tradition, undergoes an overhaul: juxtaposed with other images, the images begin to provide an examination of social issues in our multicultural world. Women's sexuality, race, power and anger are explored through the mode of story telling. The New York subway system and the people who use it become subjects for a documentary study. More recently, Forbes has made digitally manipulated images dealing with social issues, among them oppression, wealth and poverty, race and religion.
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Andrea Adjei
Discarded Memories of Delhi
21 April to 15 May 1999
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For the works in this exhibition, Adjei used personal photographs and memories to explore the themes of identity, relationships and cultural association for which she has formerly used her Ghanaian heritage as a starting point of inquiry.
This series marks a shift in geographical and personal perspective, and Adjei invites viewers to witness her attempts to piece together the identity of the ‘unknown English-woman’ whose seemingly rich and eventful life has been reduced to boot-fair commodity.
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Brother Everald Brown and Stanley Greaves
The Elders in collaboration with South London Gallery
10 March to 11 April 1999
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'Half the story has never been told'. This maxim, familiar to us all from the music of Bob Marley, haunts the art and literature of the Caribbean. It serves, as Randall Morris, the Jamaican curator and critic says, as 'a reminder, a lament, a warning, an explanation and as a siren's song of histories hidden, art unseen, voices unheard.'
Brother Everald Brown and Stanley Greaves are two artists whose work seeks to tell the other half of the story.
Brother Everald Brown, painter, sculptor, musician and seer, is a true 'Elder' of the art of the Caribbean. Entirely self-taught, his art is shaped by his complex spiritual beliefs which stem from a Baptist upbringing and his Rastafarian faith. His imagery is full of biblical references, signs, symbols and historical anecdotes. His work has been likened to a hum of consciousness, an extension of Jamaica's oral and musical tradition. This consciousness finds expression in his exquisitely crafted and painted harps and guitars, instruments designed for communal playing, often with parts for four people or more.
Stanley Greaves is an artist considered to be at the opposite end of the Caribbean art spectrum. Academically trained at Howard University in America, his paintings depict his interest in the metaphysical, an area not usually associated with art practices from outside Europe and America. He says "I was attracted to Surrealism and the Metaphysical school with its exploration of the power of intuition, imagination and dreams...the work of Magritte and De Chirico I found compatible to the problems I encountered in articulating my ideas. My focus is a kind of allegorical story-telling as opposed to painterly effects." Greaves' work combines Caribbean iconography and experience with the art historical tradition, primarily, but not exclusively, of Europe.
The contrasting stylistic techniques of each artist belie the interrelated similarities of their work. They share an engaging spiritual dimension, one that is rooted in a Caribbean metaphysic, a common musical heritage, and a unique perspective of the Caribbean, past and present.
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